


the secret life of snails, and men with crooked spines

by kenopsia (indie)



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: John and Molly Swap Roles, M/M, Uni Flashbacks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-27
Updated: 2014-09-27
Packaged: 2018-02-18 22:23:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2364218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/indie/pseuds/kenopsia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Molly Hooper is the Army Doc in charge of the blog. Victor Trevor is an old flame, and a new flame.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the secret life of snails, and men with crooked spines

**Author's Note:**

  * For [OneDreamADay](https://archiveofourown.org/users/OneDreamADay/gifts).



> Thanks to ImpishTubist for giving this fic the once over. :)

“Molly!” Sherlock snapped, slapping down a single sheet of paper onto the surface of her immaculate desk. “What is the meaning of all of this nonsense?” 

Molly pushed her glasses up her unduly small nose and squinted down. “You … took a screenshot of my blog so you could print it out and throw a dramatic fit about something. How … completely backwards.” 

“I thought it pertinent because clearly your screen saturation must be off.” 

Molly tucked her face into a soft half-smile. “No, that’s pretty much what I see when I look at my blog.” 

“The color is...” 

“Lovely, don’t you think?” 

“Horrid. And further, I would never have had Victor by had I known you were going to describe his eyes as liquid. You’re here to keep careful documentation of my investigations, not to write horrid Mills and Boone descriptions of flyaway hairs!” 

Molly let out a high trilling laugh. “No, Sherlock Holmes, I’m here because your brother offered me a large sum of money to keep track of you and you said the only way I could accept was to give you half. I’m not on staff, you twit,” she grinned, rolling her eyes. 

Sherlock huffed and threw himself bodily against the back of her sofa. 

“Oh, Sherlock,” she crooned. “Shall I call Victor and tell him you’ve fallen in a bit of a strop?” 

Sherlock muttered something mutinously. She thought she heard something about tangled in his perfect hair. 

“Heaven forbid,” she said, rolling her eyes, “the world knows your boyfriend is ridiculously handsome.” 

Sherlock was still and tense. She moved to the sofa, nudging him to give up a small space near his feet. She meant to pull them into her lap, but instead he coiled himself tightly against the other end, dressing down pulled taut over his spine and knees tucked up to his chest. Molly had more cushion than she’d anticipated. 

“You’ve mentioned him,” she said in a low voice, hand hovering tentatively over his half. “He’s not a secret and you’re not closeted. I didn’t mean to offend you, Sherlock.” 

“Yes, on my blog,” Sherlock said. “You always say, no one reads my blog.” 

“John does.” 

“Whom?” 

“You know,” she said, “mousy little John Watson from the morgue?” 

“Ah. Him. Yes, not quite the sort of world-class criminal I’m worried about, thanks.” 

Molly’s jaw nearly hit her sternum. “Sherlock Holmes,” she scolded, catching on and face flushing with agitation. “You enormous berk! You’re worried someone’s going to kidnap him. Or, you know, use him against you.” 

“It is not an unwarranted thought.” 

“I get kidnapped all the time,” Molly pointed out, still scowling. 

Sherlock tilted his face toward her, looking thoughtful. “Yes, but you’re Molly Hooper,” he said, as if that was an acceptable, complete explanation. 

Perhaps it was. 

She sat with him, content for some minutes before Sherlock seemed to compose himself and sit up, fixing his collar. "Perhaps I should ask him to write my blog." 

"That'd be a hoot." Molly scoffed. "It's pretty depressing, as is. Supposedly nothing ever happens to him." 

Sherlock pulled it up on his phone and waved it in her face. "But the colour scheme is so tasteful." 

* 

“I let a client in for you,” Mrs. Hudson had said on the stairs, a week after Sherlock had some back from the dead. Confused to have a visitor that wasn't Molly Hooper or his own parents so soon, before he'd extended any effort, Sherlock had gone up. 

“You were dead,” the man in his parlor said, and he was no client. Victor Trevor, just as gorgeous as he'd been in youth but tempered now like age put to good use, Indian with kohl dark eyes and hardly changed except the smile lines around his eyes. He wasn't smiling, then. 

“Not really,” Sherlock assured him, his stomach pooled in his shoes, everything inside him an immediate mess of sloppy gastric acid and anxiety hormones. His body had prepared him to fight or to flee but in this case neither was the right course of action. 

“I read about it in the papers. All of the papers,” he said, and Sherlock can just picture it: his news junkie friend with ten foreign dailes on the porch. 

“Sorry to disappoint,” Sherlock had said. 

Victor winced, and strode to him. “I’m so damned glad to see you in one piece. I thought about the past every day, what I would say if I had another chance. And then the universe spat you back out again. I don’t know if anything they say about you and Molly Hooper is true, but I needed to tell you.” 

Sherlock didn’t realize his mouth was open until her went to speak. His mouth was unbearably dry. 

“Should I go? I’ll go.” 

“No,” Sherlock had said; “Stay. Please.” 

* 

Sherlock never should have introduced the two of them. 

It was strange, having more than one person who mattered. A lifetime ago, there had been Mycroft, and Sherlock supposed the era where he’d been on somewhat amiable terms with his brother may have overlapped briefly with his first contact with Victor, young and fumbling and ill fated. He hadn’t had the tools in uni, the coping mechanisms or the tact to keep a kindly, nervous friend. 

Of course, shortly after he and Victor had fallen into their strange friendship, he and Mycroft had had their falling out, and he hadn’t had to worry about that. After uni, he and Victor had parted ways, and Sherlock had met DC Lestrade. He wasn’t sure why he was seemingly incapable of keeping more than one friend at a time, but it kept things simple. 

Now though, with Victor back in his life and Molly Hooper his live in blogger besides whatever sense of camaraderie he had with Geoff Lestrade, Sherlock was put in a very strange place. 

He let himself in to Victor’s flat that afternoon, to pick up things he owned. It was soothing to touch everything he had cluttered on surfaces and shelves. Everything was so very Victor: everything was completely pristine and nothing was new. 

He knew now that Victor loved the tangible sense of history, but when they’d met he’d deduced that his pack-rat habits were the result of childhood poverty. 

“Wotcher,” a voice came from behind his shoulder. 

“Hello, Victor,” Sherlock said, setting down a clay-stained baseball onto its shaped cradle. 

His hands came up to hold Sherlock’s shoulders as he stepped into his space, inhaling deeply. “What’s on your mind?” 

“I think I’m going to have to weed through my social circle,” Sherlock said, frowning. “It is getting quite out of hand since my return.” 

This was a thing Sherlock liked about Victor: he was not an amused man, but a delighted one. His laughter was immediate -- Sherlock could feel his shaking chest through his own back. “Is that so?” Victor asked, turning him around, grinning broadly. 

“Yes,” Sherlock said, taking him by the collar, buoyed already by his easy manner. “I’m practically a socialite.” 

“Who shall we cut from the team?” Victor asked, tilting his face up to look at Sherlock. Molly Hooper wasn’t wrong: he was incredibly handsome, dark eyed and skin like something in shadow, but she’d failed to adequately capture him when she’d reduced him to silken hair. The reality of Victor was so much more compelling, crooked nose and spine, calloused hands and dry wit and exuberant joy. 

“I haven’t made any decisions yet,” Sherlock said, crowding him, nosing against his throat. Victor drew in a quick breath. 

“I’m quite fond of Lestrade,” he said. 

“I’ll have him mounted above the fireplace,” Sherlock said, testing the warm waters of his exposed neck with his lips. 

* 

Molly Hooper had been kidnapped before. If she hadn’t been a world class surgeon, trained and polished in the heat of battle, she might have minded. 

As it was, she’d been sent home from a war, blood spattered and with dust in her mouth and expected to go back to the world of ghosts, moving on reflex and stumbling through life content with no destination. She’d gone on dates with men who lived normal lives: men who wanted to talk about their day jobs and pick up the check. She’d tried her best to assimilate, pick up a normal life of a job and occasional dates, and life had been unbearably drab. 

And then, like some sort of miracle, she’d stumbled almost literally, because she was so determined to mind over matter herself over the phantom pains she’d felt in a limb she didn’t even have anymore, knock on carbon-fiber composite, into Mike Stamford. 

It may have changed her life. She’d seen that almost immediately. 

It was only later that it had come into devastating focus: it had definitely changed her life. She would be in the debt of one Doctor Stamford for the rest of it. 

Sherlock, her best friend, would never do something as hatefully dull as attempt to pick up the check, and kept her pulse jumping, and who had killed himself and made her watch. 

She’d thought he was going to be lonely forever. He wasn’t built for happiness,maybe, or he had been but along the way some of the pieces had chipped off or his officious bastard of a brother had trained it out of him. Point was, something had happened, and before he’d jumped off the roof of St Bart’s (with the help of pitiful, fawning John Watson, of all people) she’d thought maybe they’d settled. Molly had stopped going on dates, because although people explicitly weren’t his area, he still didn’t like her splitting her attention in ways that left him with less than her full and total devotion. 

So maybe he was never going to be happy romantically, but some people weren’t built for that. She’d thought … and then. Well. 

She’d moved on, as best as one could when two years had passed and she still felt held together by sutures. 

Of course, the most recent time, she'd almost been set on fire, and perhaps Sherlock had a point - she'd been able to pull he twigs out of her hair easily enough, but Victor was made out of something different. 

She tried to picture him falling apart, but that didn't seem right, either. 

* 

Victor had lived in Sherlock’s hall at Cambridge. Sherlock had only met him because he’d been feeling incredibly invasive, and Victor’s door hadn’t been locked. 

In Sherlock’s mind, it might as well have been an invitation. Sherlock had never had a chance before to deduce someone from their environment before he’d met them, and he’d been unable to contain himself when he’d noticed that there was a single unlocked door one saturday, and, he was almost giddy to note -- he had no idea who live there. 

He was inside almost before he’d made a conscious decision to go. 

It was just as fascinating as he’d hoped, and he’d been practically thrumming with excitement as he’d scanned surfaces, touched knick-knacks (of which he’d had so many; Sherlock had been immediately convinced of his poverty), and flipped through the calendar on the wall above his desk (tidy but filled to the brim). He’d been on the verge of puzzling through the biggest mystery of this man’s possessions (why did he own a pair of such tight chest braces? Was it to keep in unsightly bulge? Did he have breasts?) when he noticed a glass aquarium, half hidden behind a lamp with a large shade. 

On close inspection, the lamp hadn’t been plugged in, so it was likely to distract from whatever was in the twenty gallon aquarium beyond. Sherlock put it on the floor and sat in the chair. 

The aquarium, strangely enough, did not contain fish. Or a small mammal. Instead, it seemed to contain wild grasses, growing in four inches of potting soil and something in the neighborhood of fifty snails. Snails. Sherlock leaned forward to get a better look, and then, somehow, an hour had passed. 

“What are you doing in here?” the man asked, after opening the door. Sherlock assumed it was Victor Trevor, because he’d seen the name frequently in the papers in the desk drawers. 

Sherlock didn’t answer the question, because it seemed obvious enough. “They have a social structure,” he stated instead, and it sounded like an accusation. 

“Well, yeah,” Probably Victor Trevor said, and oh, scoliosis, Sherlock realized, berating himself for being unbearably slow. 

Probably Victor Trevor pulled up a second chair and sat with him to watch a while longer. 

* 

Molly knew she should forgive John. She herself occasionally had trouble creating boundaries between herself and Sherlock Holmes and she was trained in the art of war. She could kill a man from a hundred paces but occasionally Sherlock sent her a text that said require immediate assistance, please bring cat, and she came running, gun her thigh holster, because that was what cat was cunning code for. (There had been a single incident where he had actually meant bring Toby but that was his own stupid fault for not saying so, and also, she drew the line at demanding poor Toby get involved with London’s criminals.) 

Point being, she wasn’t even attracted to Sherlock, and the sheer force of his personality bowled over her with embarrassing regularity. Poor John Watson didn’t even have a chance. 

The day she’d met Sherlock Holmes, Mike had led her back to Barts, which was in much better repair than it had been when they’d been students, straight into John Watson’s lab. It was obvious immediately that he was completely awestruck by the man. John Watson hovered in Sherlock’s periphery like a small moon. 

It took some time after Sherlock had come home, back to Baker Street, safe and sound and sleeping four hours at a time and not sleep-talking in fitful russian anymore before she could go and see him. 

“John,” she said, hovering without going in. 

“M-Molly!” he said, bashful. She hadn’t seen him in four months, since Sherlock had come home and she’d discovered that he already knew. He looked different, now. Thicker than she’d ever seen him. “Um, good to have you by! Are you -- do you... ” 

“I just thought I’d visit,” Molly said, setting down her bag. “I know… I haven’t been. I. Sorry, I’m not good with this. Bear with me.” 

John with his patient little snub face tilted up at her, was quiet. He was wearing a silly sweater in a navy and white pattern. 

“What I mean to say is, what you did for Sherlock? He needed you. I’m … sorry. About before. I shouldn’t have...” she focused her gaze on the desk where she’d thrown a fit, and John Watson’s dissection kit. 

“Thank you, Molly,” he said, looking genuinely touched. 

“Um. That’s it.” Molly said, and backed up without turning around in a spectacular show of awkwardness. 

* 

Sherlock had held back during uni. He hadn’t had a lot of friends in secondary, and virtually no practice with the other thing at all. He was, however a genius, and during the slow slide of he and Victor’s -- this nebulous mix of swirling feelings, it became glaringly obvious to even Sherlock, who hadn’t felt anything of the magnitude before. 

It came to him one night as they sat up in Victor’s room, lights burning until far past two in the morning, Victor scribbling away like made, curled up like a cat on the rug while Sherlock sprawled across his bed. 

Sherlock had been doing nothing but staring at his only friend, probably, because looking back, he hadn’t had to refocus his attention when Victor turned to him to say: “You should learn ESL.” 

“Pardon?” Sherlock said, frowning. 

“Sign language,” Victor said, grinning and using the tone of the inspired, like he expected Sherlock to be amused in very short order. 

“To what end?” 

“You could pretend like you couldn’t hear.” 

Sherlock blinked at him. 

“You know,” Victor said, still grinning, undaunted in the face of Sherlock’s scorn. “The great unwashed masses.” 

And Sherlock heard the other shoe drop, like a dull echo in the halls of his mind palace: you’re stupid about this man. 

Victor looked at him expectantly. Sherlock gave himself another two seconds to panic about his new revelation before smiling back at him. 

“Mycroft would turn that charming shade of puce.” 

“Your favorite motive,” Victor said, and turned back to his notebook, going back to writing seamlessly. “Don’t fall asleep. Eventually I’m going to need that surface back.” 

“You know I don’t sleep,” Sherlock said. It might as well have been true. Victor was like an owl, easily running until sunrise most days, and Sherlock had trained himself into keeping the same hours. 

“You’ve dozed off twice since midnight,” Victor said, and Sherlock could hear the smile in his voice. 

Sherlock shook himself as he hoisted himself up by his elbows. “I’ll just head out then. Sorry.” 

“Don’t go,” Victor said. “I like it when you nap here.” 

Sherlock stayed. 

* 

Molly Hooper inherited Mrs. Hudson when Sherlock died. 

At least, it had felt that way. She’d been so ready to move out, because she couldn’t stay in the heart of London on her pension. 

Mrs. Hudson had come up to see her, shortly after the funeral, and paused at the kitchen table. “What is this?” 

Molly had immediately jumped to the conclusion that she was looking at the sword gashes. She let out a long sigh through her mouth. “I’ll replace the table, Martha.” 

She flapped her hands dismissively. “No, this paper. Are you looking for a new flat?” Mrs. Hudson demanded. 

“Well,” Molly said, resenting her for making her say it out loud. It was something you got used to with Sherlock: you never had to say any of the embarrassing, private things out loud. He just knew them, probably before you yourself did. “Of course I am. I can’t,” she squeaked, and then hated herself. “Can’t afford to stay here.” 

“Oh. No, don’t be silly. Didn’t Mycroft come by to talk to you about that?” 

Mycroft had indeed been by, but Molly hadn’t let him speak, especially when he said he wanted to talk about Sherlock’s assets. It must have been written across her face in neon, because Mrs. Hudson pulled her into a hug. “Oh, duck,” she cooed, awkwardly crushing one of Molly’s arms between them, “Sherlock… he, well, you know, before, he must have been thinking … about you and, well, he bought the flat.” 

Molly’s heart thudded softly in her tongue. She stopped packing bags. 

She started seeing Mrs. Hudson in the evenings, in the time she would have sat with Sherlock in her chair. Instead, she tried to learn how to knit. It was something useful she could do with her small, precise hands, and it was completely non-fatal for everyone involved if her tremor worked up. 

And on nights she didn’t, sitting in a flat she wouldn’t have been able to afford, and with it missing the most important part, she thought, over and over how dare you, and felt helpless. 

* 

“I took down the bit about Victor,” she said. Sherlock was sitting like a child on the floor, constructing some sort of model out of toothpicks and a hot glue gun. He made no movement to indicate he’d heard her. She set a mug of tea at his elbow. “Because it bothered you.” 

He continued to ignore her, so she flipped the telly on and went to fetch her knitting. She’d found a pattern for a tea cozy, which wasn’t something she needed, but seemed more useful than making constant rectangles. 

“Ah. Molly, I thought you were out,” Sherlock said. 

Molly shrugged. “Sorry to give you a paradigm shift, you loon.” 

Sherlock, for once, looked embarrassed, blushing high across the crest of his cheekbones. “I was thinking, sorry.” She was amused to note, there was a smudge on his neck, lilac or dusty rose. 

“You really like him.” 

Sherlock ducked his head, curls bobbing with the momentum for a moment like an echo. He looked -- impossibly -- happy. “That’s not inaccurate.” 

“How did you meet?” Molly asked, because she’d be curious, and Sherlock had been evasive, but if he was ready to agree with her assessment, maybe she’d get an answer. 

“In Uni, actually.” Sherlock said, sounding strained, suddenly. “I might have misjudged the timing of it all, and I scared him off back then.” 

“Oh,” Molly said in a quiet voice. She moved to sit with Sherlock, who was still holding a single toothpick. 

“The whole thing was poorly timed, and poorly executed. In retrospect, I probably should have let Mycroft advise me.” 

“Because he would have had extremely quality input?” Molly ventured, wrinkling her nose. “Is Mycroft particularly adept at romance?” 

Sherlock’s hand flinched in a way that sent a lot of his precarious work falling to the table with a deluge of tiny sounds. “He did, actually. I do not know how he applies his knowledge of his own personal life, but he knows -- knew more than he had any right to, as the brother who didn’t actually… want.” 

Molly stared at the pile of toothpicks. “What was his recommendation?” 

“To wait,” Sherlock said. His dressing gown was pooled behind him, and he looked down to fuss with it. “He recognized that Victor had yet to come to terms with any sort of attraction he may have had for me. He theorized it would come years down the line, or perhaps only when his father was dead, and that if I could be patient, our friendship would only be able to change into something else after he came to accept himself.” 

Molly made a thoughtful noise. “So, in the end, you vetoed his advice?” 

“Nothing so intentional.” 

* 

“This is disgusting, Sherlock.” Victor toed his way through Sherlock’s floor, and Sherlock gave a limp shrug. 

“I’m not bothered by the mice if you aren’t. We could go back to your room.” 

“Bothered is putting it lightly,” Victor said with a shudder. “I’d rather brave sleeping in this… mold culture.” 

Sherlock, warm and excited as he always was when Victor was near, smirked at him. “If you’re quite finished insulting my living space.” 

Victor grinned, clasping him around the shoulder. “Wish I could stop, mate, but I think you’re actually completely immune to it now. Like when you can’t smell London anymore after a day trip.” 

“False. You’re being dramatic.” 

Victor rippled with laughter. “Seriously, though, Sherlock, I really appreciate you lending me your floor.” 

Sherlock waved his hand. “You know my floor is your floor.” And of course, now that Victor mentioned it, his experiments (and miscellaneous articles of clothing) had gotten a touch out of hand. 

“I could,” he started pushing some things to one side, to clear out an area. “Give me a minute.” 

“You’re useless,” Victor said, bending down to sort things more effectively. 

“We could share.” Sherlock said, and immediately realized he’d been unforgivably stupid. There it was, the step from good mates into clip on the ears territory, the warmth he felt in Victor’s company gone up in smoke. That was the fundamental truth of Sherlock: he could destroy anything if you gave him enough time. 

Instead, Victor looked guarded for a minute, before swallowing audibly. The sound punched Sherlock in the stomach. Victor affected an unbothered look. “Why not?” 

It was much easier to get a clean place to sleep once they’d decided to abandon the floor. Sherlock pushed the clutter off of his bed with gusto, before giving a sloppy attempt to straighten his covers. 

“Don’t worry about it,” Victor said. “It’ll only get mussed again.” 

They both made it into bed, silently, with very little fuss. Sherlock’s bed was wide enough for both of them to lie prone on their backs, shoulders a few inches from each other. Sherlock being a creature of comforts, had more pillows than one human could possibly need, most of them kicked off the end of the bed during the night and forgotten until he wanted one. He thought of them now. “Do you need something to fix the angle? Anything in particular for your back?” 

Victor sat up, and in the low light he was a dark silken thing against Sherlock’s sheets, and he wanted him there always. 

“You’re a dragon with the least impressive hoard I’ve ever seen,” he said, amused, and reached for one before pausing, half draped down the end of Sherlock’s bed. “Your fifty pillows aren’t part of some weird sex thing, are they?”

Sherlock rolled his eyes. “They’re just pillows.” 

“In that case,” he said, and fished one up, situating himself again. This time he was on his side, the pillow he’d just acquired tucked between his knees. Sherlock resolutely stayed at the ceiling, but he could feel Victor’s gaze hit the side of his face. “Is this weird?” 

Sherlock turned his head to look back at him, making his body into an tense, flat line. “Why are you whispering?” 

“Sorry,” Victor said, and the stare between them was flush with heat, too intense in such close proximity, and no one looked away. “I’m not sure.” 

Sherlock let his eyelids flutter closed before he shifted, pushing his arm under his pillow to form an angle that supported his head through the down. His heart thumped uneasily in his chest for ages, but somehow, eventually, he fell asleep. 

In the morning he woke, warm and blank. There was a leg, firm and hairy, entwined in his own. He kept himself perfectly still, willing his heart back into its allocated space and out of his throat. His thoughts stuttered in a slow loop of some ridiculous hope and Mycroft’s words in his imagination, _this will not end well, Sherlock._

Another part of him thought: _he wants this too. Look at that, everything you’ve ever wanted and you didn’t even have to try._

His heart went supernova when Victor sleepily reached for his hand, one eye slitted, stopping just short with his fingers splayed and Sherlock for once in his young life didn’t think, just went for it, went for what someone wanted to give him. 

They had a lie in. 

The whole thing was silly, and sentimental, and Sherlock couldn’t stop smiling. He pretended to drift off. 

Finally, Victor moved to sit up, untangling his hand from Sherlock’s and Sherlock followed him up into the land of the vertical. He sits, legs tucked under himself as Victor climbs from his bed. He feels like a girl in a film, unsure. 

Victor’s skin is almost too dark for Sherlock to see his flush, but Sherlock can see the flutter in his throat as he says, “Sorry to sleep assault you.” Bashful. 

Sherlock, a second time, didn't think; he chased. Put all of his bets on the wobble of his best friend’s shaking adam’s apple as he stood, moved into the space in front of him, and some part of his brain had the most inane thought: next time, the floor will be clean, and leaned down, because Victor hadn’t the height Sherlock did, and lingered, nose almost touching Victor’s cheek. 

Sherlock could feel the heat coming off of his friend in waves, and leaned in, in, in, his core tight and tense from the incremental movements. Victor didn’t back up. Instead, he inhaled a ragged breath. Sherlock went in, dragging the tip of his nose from Victor’s jaw to his cheek, before moving his mouth to sit against Victor’s. 

Victor made a tiny surprised noise, and Sherlock moved against him, a hand coming softly to sit in the ruffled nest of his hair. Victor, against him, opened his lips enough to take Sherlock’s bottom lip gently, just as subtly as Victor’s hand coming to rest on Sherlock’s hip, as he gave a soft suck to Sherlock’s lip. 

Sherlock was conscious of the hairs on the nape of his neck, because they were all at attention as he and Victor engaged in a very thorough kiss, delivered unbearably slowly; Sherlock dragging just the tip of his tongue across Victor’s lip, Victor’s tongue coming to the edge of his mouth to briefly touch Sherlock’s before retreating, the rustle of Victor’s tee shirt and how somehow Sherlock’s hand ended up inside of it, stroking down the warm skin of his stomach. Sherlock had taken too long to realize that Victor’s eyes were closed, and followed him into the dark. 

Eventually, Victor raised his hand to cup Sherlock’s cheek, brushing the pad of his thumb across the flat of Sherlock’s cheekbone, and pulled back. Sherlock opened his eyes. 

He’d spent the last few minutes feeling like he was sublimating. Under Victor’s pained gaze, he coalesced back into a solid again. “I’m sorry, uh, I shouldn’t have done that.” 

“No,” Sherlock said. “It was fine.” More than fine, so much more than fine there are tremors running down his sides and he willed Victor’s fingertips to iron them out. 

Instead, Victor’s face turned to look anywhere but at his. “I’m sorry Sherlock. I’m not…. I can’t. Not like that.” 

He backed out of Sherlock’s room without turning around. 

* 

“Oh dear,” Molly says from her chair, computer in her lap. Sherlock ignores her because he’s been trying to train the human race out of making useless little noises instead of cutting to the chase since he was a child. 

Victor, who clearly knows nothing of classical conditioning, looks up from his stack of newspapers. “What is it?” 

“John Watson, from the morgue, he’s got himself a new boyfriend.” 

“Oh. Well, good on him.” Victor said mildly. 

“No,” Molly said, “you have to see him.” 

Sherlock had already seen him, but he’d been spying at the time, and Molly would tell him he’d been a bit not good, so he pretended to be absorbed in his experiment, tearing textiles into two inch strips to soak in various corrosives. 

 

Victor moved behind Molly’s chair. “Oh,” he said. And then, diplomatically, “Looks like Watson has a type.” 

“A very … specific, distinct, narrow type,” Molly said, squinting at her screen. 

“I’m sure he’s lovely,” Victor said, but he sounded doubtful. 

“Sherlock, come deduce John’s new boyfriend,” Molly demanded. “Just in case he’s anything like Jim Moriarty. Or you.” 

“No one’s like him,” Victor told her, in a serious voice, and Sherlock’s heart stuttered in his chest. He pushed himself to his feet. 

* 

“You don’t have to pick my lock every time you want to come over,” Victor sighed. “You have a key.” 

Sherlock put his lock picking kit back into his coat pocket. “Just trying to keep you on your toes.” Victor hadn’t risen to greet him, or interrupt him while he was picking the door, which he surely would have been hearing from his place on the sofa. Sherlock scanned the ground for evidence of -- ah, there, the cord to his heating pad. 

Sherlock moved to him, as if it were the path of least resistance, and ended on the sofa with him. “Turn over.” 

Victor obliged, rotating on the cushions without getting up, so Sherlock could see the edges of his grey heating pad underneath him. Sherlock gingerly climbed up to sit on the crest of his bottom, supporting most of his own weight on his knees to either side of him. Victor made a warm, appreciative noise as Sherlock let his hands travel the crooked road from his broad shoulders, down past his cervical vertebrae to the painful looking bend of his thoracic and ending with warm blunt pressure at his lumbar. 

“Oh God,” Victor groaned, writing beneath him. “Are you even human?” 

Sherlock sat with him, using capable, gentle hands to working out all of the tension, there and there and there, drinking in the lovely encouraging noises Victor made beneath him. 

Sherlock got tangled in his own thoughts, how he and Victor had slid apart after that fateful semester at the end of Uni, how Victor had sent him letters and he’d replied I’m glad you’ve found a place for yourself, he’d written when he finally left his father’s firm to pursue photojournalism, and how Victor had called him up the first time his name was in the paper, oi mate, you made the international paper. 

Victor shifted with intent beneath him and Sherlock hoisted himself back up to his knees, giving Victor enough space to turn over. He pulled Sherlock back down to him, firmly. Sitting on his hips, Sherlock had the perfect view of Victor’s torso, lovely and softly muscled and broken only by the twisted figure of the tree on his pectoral. “Growing strong, growing strange,” he murmured, stroking the skin on his stomach. During Sherlock’s massage he’d been face down on his hot pad, and now his stomach was burning to the touch. Sherlock felt like a cat: wanted to nestle his face into it. 

Victor smiled shyly up at him. “It was dumb. Right after Uni. I can’t believe you even remember that.” 

“Of course I remember it. That was your favorite story. So very you.” 

“You’re going to make me cry.” Victor said. He looked up through his eyelashes, long and dark. 

Sherlock snorted. 

“Really. I wasted so much time with my head up my arse. It … it drives me crazy that I can’t get that time back.” 

Sherlock waved a hand. “It’s happened. And we’re thirty four. You didn’t have a deathbed revelation.” 

“I’m thirty five, actually, since May.” 

“Damn,” Sherlock said. “There’s always something.” 

“Anyway, all I’m saying is, I wasted so much time. I should have ...” 

Sherlock leaned down, gently placing both wrists on Victor’s strong shoulders, pinning him in place. “What should you have done?” 

Victor’s eyes narrowed in amusement as he went to flip Sherlock over. The sofa wasn’t as wide as he’d judged, and it was an awkward tussle. Finally, with Sherlock on his back, the overheated felt under his shoulders, Victor started to nuzzle down. “Should have stayed to face my demons. Should have been the two of us against the rest of the world.” 

Sherlock’s heart thumped unevenly in his chest. 

Victor went on, so casually: “Should have sucked you off every day. Twice a day when we were younger.” 

Sherlock almost pulled a muscle in his face trying not to looked as shocked by that sentence as he was. Victor Trevor had not, as such, done anything in the vicinity of Sherlock’s cock that could be described as a suck off. The phrase curled like a hot wet ribbon around him, and brought saliva to his mouth. 

After a beat, Sherlock smirked. “One of us is still only thirty-four.” 

“Twice a day it is.”


End file.
